Hugging WordPress Plugin Authors

I’ve been digging into a wide variety of WordPress Plugins. Even after several years involvement with WordPress and the wonderful world of WordPress Plugins, I’m still staggered by the creativity and genius behind this bits of code.

WordPress Plugin authors do what they do for three reasons:

They had a problem and they needed to fix it.

They love WordPress.

They love the WordPress Community even more, so they share their solutions for free.

Most WordPress Plugin authors do not ask for compensation. They just hand their skillful code over to anyone who wants to use it. They respond to questions patiently, often the same ones over and over and over again. They help answer questions on the WordPress Support Forums and upgrade, debug, fix, and streamline their WordPress Plugins to make them better – just because they want to.

While I’m going to be talking about hundreds of different WordPress Plugins over the next month, including some of your favorites and introducing you to some of mine, I want you to do something for me.

Give WordPress Plugin authors money as appreciation for their continued support of your blog.

We WordPress Plugin users get all the joy while they do all of the work. Yes, there is the satisfaction of helping others, but why not help them pay for all the bandwidth it costs them to allow you to download the Plugin? Why not help them out with the cost of the storage space it takes to provide the extra information and files? If their Plugin helps you make money with your WordPress blog, then why not share the wealth?

“Money is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around encouraging young things to grow.”Dolly Madison from “The Matchmaker/Hello Dolly” by Thornton Wilder

I would love to take every WordPress Plugin author who ever saved my blogging buns out to dinner. So why not pay for the equivalent of a dinner as a thank you for saving your blogging buns?

Not all WordPress Plugin authors have their hands out. So if they don’t have a PayPal button asking for a donation when you stop by their site, leave a comment telling them how much you love and appreciate their WordPress Plugin. Then tell your friends.

If you can’t spread the money, spread the love.

So while I’m busting my blogging butt to share with you all the fun stuff I’ve found with WordPress Plugins, start spreading the fertilizer around.

12 Comments

It’s always good to give some love to open source developers, but not all of them want money. I think it’s a good idea for developers to have some kind of policy on what kind of love they want to receive. So, I’ve updated my plugins page with my donation policy, just in case you inspired someone to shower me with cash. I prefer it to go to my favourite charities instead.

Yes, same applies to themes. One of my friends is a well known web template designer who has also made a few popular WP-themes, and he spends several hours every day on helping people who use his themes for free! While he makes a living from his own website, meaning his free help still brings in money from advertisers and sponsors, he still gives free support to hundreds of people every week. It has to be one of the coolest jobs in the world! But he has to deal with many complaining idiots too. He would indeed deserve (and does get) small donations every now and then, just like all plugin coders! :)

I am constantly amazed by some of the incredible plugins I have found out there. I love tweaking my blog and other sites (including adapting WP to be used as a CMS) and it has been very rare that I have not been able to find a plugin that does whatever I want to do.

The other day, I finally encountered a situation where no plugin existed to do what I wanted to do. I posted about it on the Support forums and within a day or two, an incredible developer had actually written a plugin just for me.

I gave him money. Enough for dinner, I would say.

Thanks to all the great plugin developers out there. I can’t believe how generous they are.

I do it because I have an idea and want to build upon it. For me, a lot of times it’s the challenge and learning aspect. However, the main reason I answer support questions whether by a plugin or scripting help or whatever is to help (in any small way I can).

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